By RUSS BUETTNER
The New York Times
Published: April 3, 2013
Here are some excerpts:
Throughout his adult life, Mr. Tarloff, 45, has been prescribed antipsychotic medication to alleviate delusions and hallucinations. He has received a diagnosis of schizophrenia and been hospitalized against his will numerous times. And three months after one such commitment, Mr. Tarloff entered an Upper East Side medical office on Feb. 12, 2008, and killed Kathryn Faughey, a psychologist, with a mallet and a knife.
Yet a lifetime of being crazy hardly makes an insanity defense a sure thing. Mr. Tarloff’s lawyers must convince jurors, who will begin deliberations Wednesday, that he was so sick that day that he did not understand the consequences of his actions: that pounding and stabbing Dr. Faughey could kill her, or that the attack was wrong.
The standard is so difficult to meet that few defendants using the insanity defense in New York win at trial. Of 5,910 murder cases completed in the last decade statewide, only seven defendants have been found at trial to be not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.
The state does not track how often the defense is raised. But failed attempts at the insanity defense regularly receive public attention, including Andrew Goldstein, a schizophrenic who in 1999 pushed Kendra Webdale to her death in front of a subway train, and Renato Seabra, a Portuguese fashion model who in 2011 murdered and mutilated his lover in a Times Square hotel. Both were found criminally responsible for murder.
The entire story is here.
